Frequently Asked Questions

Zero Trust and Microsegmentation Basics

Zero Trust is a cybersecurity strategy that treats every network request as untrusted by default, whether it originates inside or outside the corporate perimeter. It removes implicit trust, enforces continuous verification of users, devices, and applications, and assumes breach as a guiding principle. Core tenets include least-privilege access, continuous authentication, and granular policy enforcement to reduce attack surfaces and lateral movement.

Microsegmentation is a network security technique that divides the IT environment into highly isolated zones or “microsegments,” each governed by its own access controls and policies. Traditionally implemented via VLANs or IP-based rules, modern microsegmentation extends to host-level policy enforcement points—such as agents on servers, containers, or workloads—to dynamically enforce least-privilege communication paths across data centres, clouds, and hybrid environments.

By isolating workloads into fine-grained segments, microsegmentation directly enforces Zero Trust’s never-trust, always-verify ethos. It prevents unauthorized lateral movement by allowing only explicitly permitted traffic flows, integrates with identity-aware controls to ensure minimal access, and accelerates Zero Trust maturity by providing the policy enforcement and visibility needed to continuously validate each session.

Organisations often struggle with the complexity of mapping east-west traffic dependencies, creating and managing thousands of granular policies, and avoiding mis-configurations that can disrupt applications. Legacy segmentation methods relying on static rules or broad VLANs lack the agility required for dynamic workloads, while host-based enforcement demands integration with existing orchestration and monitoring tools to maintain visibility and compliance.

When paired, Zero Trust and Microsegmentation reinforce each other to deliver stronger security outcomes. They enforce least-privilege access down to the process level, minimize the blast radius of any compromise, and enable adaptive controls that respond to real-time threat intelligence. This synergy not only hardens defences against sophisticated attacks but also provides the continuous monitoring and auditability critical for regulatory compliance and risk reduction.

FAQ